[PLUG] Going back to Hardy

[John Jason Jordan]

On Thu, 2 Apr 2009 10:47:07 -0700 (PDT)
Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> dijo:

> > I mean what you see on the screen is exactly what will come out of the
> > printer, and exactly what the PDF export will look like.
> 
>    And you need to see this as you write and edit because ...?

You *can* write in InDesign, and I have done so, but that is not what
it's primarily designed for. It is a layout app. It is designed as the
tool in which you assemble text created in (typically) a word processor
and graphics created in something that can create bitmaps or vector
graphics, and then tweak them both as you position them on the page.
Everything is in frames, which can be linked. Having things in frames
makes it easy to position them on the page. 

Normally I would do the major chunks of writing in OOo and then place
into InDesign. But I much prefer to do the laying out as I write. You
ask why I would do this as though it is contrary to the natural order
of things. For you, it probably is. For me, it's the logical way to
write a book. You see, to me the appearance is as important as what I
say. If I'm getting close to the end of a chapter and I'm near the end
of an even numbered page, I need to decide if I want to condense what I
say so it will fit, or go ahead and add two more pages to the book
(because I'm traditional enough that I like chapters to start on an odd
numbered page).

InDesign is not a text editor where it automatically creates new pages
for you. In fact, when you create a new document you must specify how
many pages you want it to be. You can add and delete pages if you guess
wrong, but it is page based. If you're typing and get to the end of the
page you can continue typing, but the text will be overset. 

To me InDesign is the logical way to create a book. Scribus is too,
because the paradigm is similar, except that Scribus lacks so many
features that it is not usable for much beyond newsletters and book
covers. 

The reason that InDesign seems logical is because it is exactly the
same process that you would use if you were laying things up with hot
wax. 

And I could have done the résumé in about five minutes, ten at the
outside. The text would be optically kerned (ignoring the kerning
tables in the font) the margins would be optically aligned and the line
endings would be adjusted according to the paragraph (they actually
used Knuth's code). 

I have no doubt that you would dislike InDesign. But you and I are
wired very differently. I am totally visual, so to me the appearance is
part of the content. I can't conceive of "just writing." When I do
"just write" I must at least have in mind what it is going to end up
looking like on the page.